Astronomers have for the first time identified the source of a high-energy neutrino which shot through a solid ice laboratory at the South Pole last year in a “triumph” that promises to revolutionise understanding of fundamental physics.

Neutrinos are virtually massless, subatomic particles which race across the universe, passing unnoticed through planets and stars.

Despite their abundance - hundreds of billions pass through each human every second - they have so far proved impossible to detect because they interact with matter so rarely....

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